Subject: The Hill | Poll: Voters don't trust Trump to fill Supreme Court vacancy
From: Brad Woodhouse <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 9 May 2016 11:33:35 -0400

Poll: Voters don't trust Trump to fill Supreme Court vacancy

By Lydia Wheeler - 05/09/16 10:48 AM EDT

http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/279199-poll-majority-of-voters-dont-trust-trump-to-fill-supreme-court

The majority of Americans don’t trust Donald Trump to select and nominate the next Supreme Court justice, according to a poll released Monday.

In the survey, commissioned by the liberal advocacy group Americans United for Change, Public Policy Polling found that 53 percent of voters nationally don’t trust the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to fill the vacant seat on the court left by the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia, compared to 38 percent who do.

Americans by double-digit margins trust both President Obama and Hillary Clinton more than Trump with the duty of picking a Supreme Court justice. Polling results showed Obama beat Trump 53 percent to 37 percent on that question, and the front-runner for the Democratic nomination had a similar 52 to 37 percent spread.

The poll also found that 29 percent of Republicans would prefer either Obama or Clinton making that decision instead of their own party’s presumptive nominee for president.

The polling also showed that an increasing majority of Americans, 58 percent, want the Supreme Court seat to be filled this year, compared to 56 percent from March. Nationally, 65 percent of voters said Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland should get a fair hearing.

Republicans have held strong on their refusal to hold a hearing or up-or-down vote on Garland’s confirmation, a decision Monday’s poll showed could hurt senators facing tough re-elections in November.

Of the 884 voters interviewed nationally, 50 percent said they’d be less likely to vote for a senator who opposed having confirmation hearings, compared to 18 percent who said that stance would make them more likely to vote for their senator.